More on the puzzling hoof

Several of you have been asking for the sole shots on the puzzling hoof.  I first posted about it here, then did a follow-up post here but many of the comments asked - quite rightly - where on earth were the sole shots?!?!?!?

You ask, you get - here is the medial deviation on that LF which looks so mad from the top.  TBH, I hung on with the sole shots because I wanted not just to post the photos but footage as well, and its been so busy that took a few days!

The biggest problem  - for most people - with a hoof that looks like this is reconciling how it looks with how it works.

My ethos over the last few years has been to respect movement above appearance - if a horse is sounder with an odd-looking foot - well, that's fine by me.  And in fact, once I adopted this approach I started to see why horses grew the deviations they did and suddenly the "odd" appearances made sense.

With this horse, you need to be aware that the other 3 hooves are self-trimming and look (relatively!) normal.  For me, that's a red flag that there is something unusual about the limb which has the deviated hoof capsule.   Kudos to those blog readers who had already suspected that the deviation was due to a shoulder injury :-)

Here is the footage of this horse on a circle.  Consistent work is essential for him because, as you can see, he has a weak caudal hoof which requires regular work to maintain its health.  His hoof isn't ideal, his shoulder injury isn't ideal but sometimes we have to work with what we've got.